


Over Grown

by ungoodpirate



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Character Study, Family Issues, Future Fic, Gen, M/M, Past Abuse, Reference to Past Spousal Abuse, Ronan typical language, pynch - Freeform, reference to past child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-01-20 15:06:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18527527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ungoodpirate/pseuds/ungoodpirate
Summary: “I saved myself. Why can’t I save her?"---Adam’s father dies and Adam is left to deal with the aftermath. And the aftermath just happens to be his mother.





	1. Adam

Adam Parrish held the phone like it was a relic. After all, it had just given him a message like an oracle. A message that his whole life had changed. 

Ronan found him sitting there at the kitchen table, maybe knowing something was wrong because Adam was actually sitting stock still for a moment. Sitting idly still wasn’t in Adam’s nature as a workaholic. 

Ronan hovered. “What’s going on?” 

Adam blinked. How long had he been sitting here since he hung up? 

“My mother called.” 

He felt Ronan’s hand settle on his shoulder. Contact with his parents was often a debilitating enough situation when it was just a check in or an ask for money. 

It hadn’t been a check in or an ask for money. 

“My dad’s dead.” 

 

#

 

Heart attack. 

Too much drinking. Too much anger. Not enough preventive medicine and health insurance. Karma. Some mixture of the bunch. Adam hadn’t seen the man in years. Not quite a decade, but closing in. Hadn’t talked to him since he left Henrietta for college. Heard his voice in the background of a phone call with his mother about a year and a half ago, but that was it. 

That was it. So why did Adam feel so small as he stepped back inside the double wild trailer? Like he had been reduced back to child-size and powerless. 

He didn’t expect a hug from his mother upon showing up and he didn’t get one. Instead she said “There you are” like an accusation. 

“I got on the first flight I could.” 

She ran her shaking fingers through her hair. There was a lot more gray than Adam remembered. She looked a lot more worn. So did the trailer as a whole. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. He had a hard time parsing out from memory what was just aging and what he had forgotten. 

“There’s so much to do,” his mother said. “With the arrangements. And the hospital. The bank.”

“I’ll take care of it.” All of it. That’s why he was here, after all. For the practicalities. Not the sentiment. When she wasn’t forthcoming, he started sifting through the paperwork scattered on the kitchen table. 

Hovering anxious, like he’d seen her do many times when his father was on the edge of a dangerous mood, his mother said nothing. Just tore paper towel from the roll and starting wiping down the pulls on the kitchen cabinetry. A mock effort of cleaning just to have something to do and looking like you were doing something. 

“I can’t afford any of it,” she said. 

“I’ll pay for it.”

Money wasn’t the scary thing in this situation. Not for Adam. Not anymore. There were a lot of calls to make. Funeral parlor first. He’d hand over the details to the funeral director -- economy casket, headstone, whatever he thought was best. Adam didn’t have the energy for any creative decisions. 

“Did he want get buried?” Adam asked. He only glanced at his mother out of the corner of his eye. Mentally, he was already organizing the calls he needed to make in order priority. 

His mother twisted the paper towel into a snake. “He didn’t have a will.” 

Irresponsible in every way. 

“Did you two ever talk about it?” 

“Of course not,” she replied, her tone scandalized. 

Did she think couples didn’t and shouldn’t talk about what they would do if the other died? Or was she scandalized in a whole other way -- would bringing up her husband’s death to his face just have been an invitation for fists? 

“I don’t like that burning people into ashes thing,” his mother volunteered. It was start. 

“Alright. One thing down. Burial.” 

“You... You don’t have to be so cold about it.”

Adam’s eyes broke from the paper and his mind from its plans as he turned to look at her straight on. For a second he felt tall because he was taller than her, and he remembered that now, at their dissonance -- he had long ago outgrown this place. 

“What do you expect me to be?” he said, more weary than any other emotion. “I came all this way to help you out. To care of all this. You can’t expect me to…” He released a pant of breath other than the true words that might just have been a little sharply insensitive to a recent widow.

She couldn’t really, after everything, except him to be grieving. 

 

#

 

He went through the rest of the day making arrangements, making payments, piece-mealing answers and opinions from his mother; By dusk it wasn’t over, completely, but the funeral was set for Saturday and Mom shouldn’t have any bill collectors hassling. 

“Your room’s still… as you left it.” 

If part of Adam was surprised it hadn’t been destroyed in some sort of rage and retribution by his father in all these years away, it was succumbed by what she was implying.

“I have a motel room booked in Danville.” 

It was about forty minutes away drive, but he had a rental car too. 

“That’s a waste of money.”

“It’s my money to waste.” He would’ve never been able to get a peaceful night of sleep here. Probably wouldn’t in the motel room either, but there was at least a better chance. 

#

 

“I feel like I’m going to vomit.” 

“I can be on the next plane,” Ronan replied. Adam held his phone pressed desperately to his ear. Ronan had picked up his call on the first ring. Ronan had listened to Adam spill out his guts in the metaphorical sense (he hadn’t vomited  _ yet)  _ without an interruption. Ronan would’ve suffered through a video call without complaint for Adam right now if that’s what Adam had wanted. 

Adam didn’t want it. He didn’t want to show his face or fake his emotions into an even more composed fakery. 

“No. It’s fine. I can do this.” 

That was the conundrum of this situation. He wanted Ronan’s comfort. His bouying support, but he didn’t want Ronan here for this. Because Ronan was so visceral. He’d get angry and outraged and defensive on Adam’s account. And right now, Adam just wanted to detach, get through this, and get out. 

“I can do this.”

“You said that twice.” 

“There’s no one for you to beat up this time.”

“Yeah. Because the motherfucker’s dead.” 

Adam huffed. “Yeah.”  He plopped down across the bed. He had held himself tense all day and now his shoulders were even stiffer than the cheap mattress. “Is it bad that I’m not glad that he’s dead?” 

The line was silent. 

“I mean,” Adam added in a rush. “I’m not sad. Being back here is bringing back all sorts of terrible feelings, but not sad. Him dead, it’s not… peace.” He laid his free hands over his eyes to block out the light. He should’ve turned it off before he laid down because now that he had laid down he didn’t want to get up for the next forty-eight hours. 

“Because he deserves worse than death?” Ronan asked. 

“Because I wanted him to realize he was wrong.” Adam laughed, because if he didn’t laugh he would sob. “That’s my pathetic revenge fantasy. I just wanted him to realize he was wrong.” 

“What you’re feeling right now doesn’t have to make sense to anybody,” Ronan said. “It doesn’t even have to make sense to yourself.” Ronan was the one who had the decade of experience on processing having a dead dad, but his dad had been a hero and Adam’s had been a monster, and reality couldn’t get more opposite than that. 

“I can fly down fucking tomorrow.” 

“Don’t,” Adam said again, but didn’t attach it to the lie of ‘fine.’ 

“Get some sleep.”

Adam made of one those not-sob laughs again. “I won’t.”

“Try.”

“You too.” 

They didn’t say goodbye. Adam just held the phone to his ear, listening to Ronan breath, rustling around his life, and muttering little reminders to himself until Adam’s phone beeped in warning of five percent battery. He ghosted his thumb over the end call button, and then rolled over, pushing his face into the flat pillow and never even bothering with the stupid light. 

 

#

 

All day of the funeral proceedings Adam imitated a statue: neutral expression unchanging and stone on the inside. His mother was the perfect widow, weepy but coherent and accepting condolences as they were given. 

More people showed than Adam had thought. But he guessed Robert Parrish wasn’t the same dictator out of the trailer than he had been in it. Coworkers and drinking buddies. Folks from the trailer park. It wasn’t exactly a crowd, but more than enough for Adam to feel outnumbered. He was sure the abandoning, queer son wasn’t exactly favorably held in the locals’ opinions.

But it was over quickly. There were no drawn out viewings or a church service. Like his boss, the government, and the rich, God was someone Robert Parrish had resented for never giving him his due. Then Adam was driving his mother back to the trailer park. Then he’d be going to his motel for one last night, then a plane in the morning, and a long shower when he got back to his real home to wash this whole place and its memories away. 

With all of that, he didn’t expect what happened when the returned to the trailer after it was all done. His mother broke down. 

Sobbing. About thirty seconds about getting back in the trailer. Collapsing onto a seat on the couch, face in hands.   

“I can’t do this. I can’t do this alone. Live alone. I don’t know how. I never have.”

Adam’s hand flexed in her direction. To hold her shoulder like Ronan had done for him? Was that too little? Was that too much? Should he hug her instead? That was definitely too much. 

He had held himself strong and girded all day. He wasn’t prepared for hysterics. 

Adam rounded the couch and sat down beside her; a good compromise, he thought. 

“I told you I’d take of it,” he said, a logical  to an emotional response. These were not things that solved each other. “Any bills. A new car.” Dad’s heart attack had occured when he was driving. Wrecked his old truck. Made what could’ve been survivable, fatal. 

A sniff. Hands still covering face. “I haven’t driven in years.” 

Adam gnawed on the inside of his cheek. License probably lapsed too. She could get it renewed. She could move. Move somewhere she didn’t need a car. Like further into town. Like a city. But these were just layers of solutions he was trying to plaster over some deep cracks in the foundation. 

“What do you need, Mom?” 

She sucked in a shuddery breath and lowered her hands. Adam thought, unless he had slipped up before, this was the first he had called her that title she he’d come… well, not home, but… here. 

“What do you need?” 

 

#

 

“Ronan.” 

“What is it?” Ronan countered instead of greeting, because Adam had slipped up and used his ‘business voice.’

“Don’t get mad.”

“You’re staying longer.” 

“Not exactly.” He raked his lip through his teeth. “My mom’s going to come and stay with us for a while.” 


	2. Ronan

To be completely fucking honest, Mrs. Parrish had never made much of an impression in Ronan Lynch’s memory.

Unlike her now rotting-in-hell husband -- in which Ronan knew the gravel sound of his voice, the bulldog look of his face, and the feel of jawbone under his knuckles -- Mrs. Parrish was a non-entity. A shadow figure.

When he saw her standing outside the airport with Adam, he realized why. She was a beige-colored, willowy thing that held herself in a curled-in posture that suggested she wanted people to overlook her. It was something similar to Adam in those early days of Aglionby.

If that realization was supposed to pang Ronan deep somewhere to make him sympathetic, it didn’t. She had been an orchestrator of Adam’s misery too.

Ronan pulled up to the curb spot right in front of them and laid on his horn just to be obnoxious. Adam gave him  _ a look _ . Ronan smirked and popped the trunk.

Luggage was loaded. Adam held open a door in the back for his mother to slide in, and then got in the passenger seat. He laid his hand over Ronan’s on the gearshift and squeezed. He had been absent for five days and didn’t even lean in for a ‘hello again’ kiss just because his mother was in the back seat.

Jesus, Mary, Joseph. Ronan already hated this.

Adam cleared his throat. “Mom, you remember…” He cleared his throat again. How did you introduce two people who had meet informally, many years ago, under bad circumstances?

“This is Ronan.” Adam sped through the words shotgun style. “Ronan, my mom.”

Ronan nodded into the rear view mirror. His sunglasses, at least, made him look disaffected rather than murderous.

“Please start driving,” Adam muttered as he sunk back into the leather seat. Apparently just this one awkward interaction already had already worn him out.

#

Driving through the city might’ve been a more creative obstacle course than anything rural, but it was a lot less fun because you could never get any real speed. At one point in his life, Ronan Lynch had to decide between living where there were long, empty streets with farm fields in between and living where Adam was.

It was one of those trade-offs you made for a person you loved. Ronan didn’t have regrets, but he did have things he missed.

He screech-wheeled into the parking pad behind their townhouse because he had to get his kicks from somewhere.

Sitting there, he let Adam and his mother get out of the car before him. Let them start up on conversation on the other side of the car. Then Ronan craned out, called over the car’s roof: “I’ll get the bags.”

It gave an excuse for them to go ahead of him; it gave an excuse for him to stay behind.

That was exactly how it played out.

Ronan muscled two bags out of the trunk. He slammed it with a thunk that was satisfying if not satisfying enough. By the time he got inside, there was were creaks of feet going up the steps.

Ronan plopped the bags down by the bottom of the staircase and retreated to the living room. Maybe ten minutes later came Adam tiptoeing back down the stairs.

“She said she was going to take a nap, so…” Adam sat down beside Ronan on the couch, leaned in.

Ronan angled in his head in an ungiving way. “So now you’re going to kiss me.”

Stopped short, Adam said, “I don’t like PDA.”

“Inside my car isn’t public.”

Adam shifted, curled his legs up under him on the cushion like he was settling in for something long.

“You’re mad at me,” Adam said.  

That wasn’t it.

Ronan looked at the light bulb burned out in the corner of the room, at the ratty suitcase sitting at the bottom of the stairs, at the rumpled blanket he had used here on the couch last night because he felt itchy sleeping in their bed alone.

He was mad at Adam’s mom. Pissed off at the situation. But with Adam it was something else.

“I just don’t fucking understood you,” he said. “You don’t owe her shit. And anything you think you do you’ve paid off a thousand fucking times already.”

How many calls had Adam taken over the years? How many times had a familiar number flashed up on the caller id and ruined a good mood, a good night, a happy moment? How many times had Adam sent money for some emergency? Adam had already paid any dues owed and so much more.

“She was his victim too.”

Ronan let out a sigh like releasing steam, a lot less hot headed now. He curled a hand around the back of Adam’s neck and pulled him close. There was that ‘hello, again’ kiss and there was another after.

#

“I know I had today scheduled off, but they need me on that Lenhoff case stat because no one can do anything without me, so can you handle everything here please.” Adam took a big, gulping breath.

Ronan waited for that beat to land before saying, “Sure.”

Adam kissed Ronan on the cheek and rushed out the door.

Ronan Lynch lived a strange life. He didn’t work. He had a trust fund that assured he never had to work. He didn’t have the temperament to be an employee. Nor the college degree. Nor the high school diploma.

Ronan filled his days with things other than employment. Their house was old, so there was always something breaking that needed fixing. He cooked, because (a) Adam couldn’t cook for shit and (b) Ronan was always try to piece together his mom’s old recipes. He read thick books in Latin just for kicks. He tended the garden they kept on the roof top deck because they had no yard for it. He volunteered at an animal shelter two days a week. He’d even made some social friends. The type you might help move, but not the type you shared a soul-bond with -- It almost felt like cheating.

And he had Adam.

What he didn’t have was the Barns. Turned out there were a lot of people who wanted a slice of what Niall Lynch had left behind, or the Graywarren, or any type of dream thing: gadget, animal, or little girl with goat feet. Turned out that the only way to protect it all was to dream up something to close it off from the world with no in or out to be exploited. Ronan could’ve either closed himself up with it, or outside of it.

He had chosen the world. There had been a time when he wouldn’t have.  

It was still like a fucking chunk of his soul was missing. He didn’t have regrets, but he did have things he missed.

Overhead, he heard movement. The third party in their house was awake. Ronan went to the fridge and got out a carton of eggs.

Dinner last night had been awkward. Part of it had been of Ronan’s consciousness making. He had ordered in Thai food. Given that there was no Thai places within a fifty mile radius of Henrietta, it had been an unwelcoming gesture. Adam had been short with him the rest of the night until they were lying together, lights off, and Adam let out about a week’s worth of repressed sobbing in Ronan’s chest.

“It’s not fucking fair,” Adam had said, rubbing viciously at his eyes as if could wipe the tears away permanently. “He doesn’t fucking deserve this.”

Ronan knew that crying didn’t have to just be for sadness. It could be for anger and frustration, injustice and pain. He didn’t say any of that. Because people didn’t need their emotions logicked while they were in the middle of them. They just needed them heard.

This morning Adam had just trusted Ronan to ‘handle everything here’ so now he was making some All-American scrambled egg breakfast.

Mrs. Parrish appeared downstairs. She paused in the hallow of the kitchen doorway when she saw Ronan inside without her son in sight.

“Adam had a work emergency. He’s very important. And he already took off a week… I made breakfast.”   

Mrs. Parrish slide into a seat at the table with a series of moves that were nearly noiseless.

Ronan set the plate before her in an unceremonious way that made it clatter.

“Let’s get this all straight. You don’t like me. I don’t like you. But I love Adam and he wants you here.”

Mrs. Parrish pushed the plate away from herself with her fingertips. “I can make my own food.”   

Never one to walk away from a fight, Ronan picked up the plate and dumped it, food and all, into the sink.

#

Adam got home earlier than he would from work usually, but not soon enough. Ronan spied him from the rooftop where he had been sweating away weeding their garden. He had neglected it the week Adam had been away because for that entire week Ronan had been fucking useless.

He got down the two sets of stairs fast enough to meet Adam at the front door while Ronan was still covered in dirt.

“How long is she staying here?” he asked in a undertone. The television playing a laugh track gave away her position.

“It’s been less than twenty-four hours.” Adam pressed Ronan in the center of the chest. “Go shower.”

“You like me like this,” Ronan said, but it was pointless. It wasn’t like they could start getting randy in the entrance hall with the mother the next room over.

A pat on the shoulder was all the dismissal Ronan got. Adam went into the living room to check on her. Ronan overheard Adam asking questions about her day and how she was settling in as Ronan tromped back upstairs.

Fuck this. She didn’t deserve Adam asking about her day. Fuck this.

In the shower he rested his forehead on the cool tile as the water steamed around him, trying to stuff into his mind this: This wasn’t about what  _ she _ deserved; it was about what Adam needed.

For some unfathomable reason, he needed this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of my issues with last chapters many typos was realizing that I had somehow turned my spell check off.


	3. Alice

Alice Parrish was a simple woman. Life had taught her fast not to get any highfalutin ideas about what she wanted. About what she deserved.   
From very early on Alice’s mother had made sure that she knew three things: that Alice wasn’t smart, that Alice wasn’t particularly pretty, and that Alice would be lucky to find any man that would have her. And if she find a man, she should get married. And be thankful about it. 

After that… it was easy. Her job as a wife was to stick by her man through and through, because that’s what a good wife did. And that’s what a woman does to survive in this world. Who cares if he drinks? Who cares if he hits you now and again? There are worse things. 

Alice had played her part. Alice had suffered. Alice had survived. 

She wasn’t sure what part happened next. 

 

#

 

Adam wasn’t like his father. He was more like Alice, and that’s what worried her. Except he was smart; she didn’t know where he got that brain. 

“This is a pretty cool street. You can just walk a few blocks and get to anything. Restaurants, coffee shop, grocery store… dry cleaning.” Adam shoved his hands in his pockets as he trailed off. He shrugged up against a breeze as they waited at a crosswalk. 

The city was like all the cities she’d ever seen on TV, but nothing like she’d ever been part of. It was noisey, busy, smelly, and peopled with persons of all types -- but she wasn’t wasn’t one of them. 

The lights changed and they crossed the road. 

“I want you to feel independent,” Adam went on. “That you can go out even without a car.”   

Her? Independant? Alice didn’t know who her son thought she was. She had never lived alone once in her life. She went from her parents house to her husband’s trailer to, now, her son’s fancy city townhouse. 

The last one was the most disturbing because it was the one to make the least sense. She knew what to do as daughter and as a wife: take orders and take fists, do chores and cater other people’s moods. She had never been sure what to do as a mother. But Adam just told her to not worry about it.

Don’t worry about money. Don’t worry about the dishes. 

She already knew she didn’t have to worry about her son. 

“What do I have to dry clean?”

“It’s just… It’s just an example.”

She had unfooted him. Alice might be living at his mercy, but she still had this power. 

A little down the block further Adam stopped at a store front. “Here we are.”

She followed him into a small grocery. He hooked a basket over his arm and she watched as he bypassed the 99 cents toothpaste for the 3.99 kind. 

“If you need anything, just grab it.” 

She didn’t. She didn’t just grab things from store shelves. She hadn’t known they were coming to a store, or she would’ve checked her things, checked the kitchen shelves, and come up with a list in order of priority versus cost.  

“Are you sure?” Adam prodded again after they had snaked through the whole store. He balanced a packet of coffee on top of the collection in his basket. “I’m buying. This is… this is not enough money to bother me.” 

He didn’t say it like bragging, but it felt like a slap anyway. 

“I’m fine,” she said, in pure heel-in-the-ground stubbornness. 

“Mom.” Pleading. 

She’s heard that tone before. Without willing it up a memory came to her. Adam as a boy, some new bruise blooming, and Robert gone -- maybe stormed out for a drink or passed out in the bed. Adam saying her name, holding out a hand, hoping for some comfort or alliance. It could been one night she was thinking of, or a hundred nights. But even all the way back then she had already been dried up. She had nothing to give. 

“I’m tired,” she said. “I want to go back to the house.” 

There it was, plain on his face. That same disappointment.  

#

 

When they got back to the house the boyfriend was there. He was always there. He took the grocery bags from Adam’s hands as soon as he entered the kitchen and plopped them on the counter. 

They unpacked the bags together moving in a sort of familiar choreography, each knowing where everything went and neither ever getting in the others’ way. The boyfriend said “Catch” and tossed a box of pasta across the kitchen to her son. Adam caught it. 

Alice turned away. She started up the stairs, but had to stop halfway up to grip the banister and catch her breath. She was old. So old she couldn’t remember the last time she had felt young; before Adam was born, certainly. He had been the final anchor, after all, more than a marriage certificate and not a penny to her name ever weighed her down. 

A peel of laughter from the kitchen reached her ears; Alice forced herself to tromp the rest of the way up.

Rushing into her room she almost tripped over her duffle on the floor. She hadn’t unpacked. She’d been living out of it. But the room -- bigger than her room back in Henrietta -- had an empty closet and dresser. 

Alice dumped her bag out on the bed and began to sort through.

She remembered seeing her son and that boy that first night of hers here. She saw them  when she had come down from her nap from the little view she got from the middle of staircase straight into the living room. It was burned in their brain. The two of them on the couch. Laying together. Cuddled. 

They hadn’t been anything like that at all in the days since, at least when she was around. 

She knew it was the two of them. Known it for years. Before Adam ever left Henrietta rumors of him and a rich Aglionby boy were a curse on his father’s temper. Alice never thought she’d have to see it. The rest of the world might’ve moved on without her, all fine with this two men and two women stuff. Never once did she coddle Adam so she didn’t know where he got it from. 

But she as living under his roof. You held your tongue when you were living under someone else’s roof. 

On top of the bedspread she tried to smooth out of her best blouse but she thought it might’ve been years since it hadn’t been wrinkled. The fabric was thin and no longer the white it had started as. Would it be presuming too much to hang it up in the closet? 

If Adam had to pick a boy... why couldn’t he have picked a softer one? One without so much anger written across his heart. One who wasn’t responsible for tearing the Parrish family apart in a single night by butting into family matters that had nothing to do with him and getting Robert arrested. Getting Adam to leave. Getting everything to change. 

Who did people think handled Robert’s outrage in the aftermath?

Alice stuffed her clothes back into her bag. None of them were nice enough to put away in this room. And really, who knew how long she’d be staying anyway.

 

#

 

Alice dumped a week’s stay worth of her clothes in the washing machine in the little, dedicated laundry room off the kitchen, and overheard the boyfriend say, “Ancel’s having his bachelor party tonight. You’re invited if you want.” 

Back in the kitchen, Adam said, “I think I’ll stay in.” 

Alice measured out of conservative amount of name brand detergent.  

There was some rustling. A kiss? A hug? Just two people existing in the same space? Alice closed the lid silently. 

The boyfriend: “Dan’s playing designated driver, so I’m leaving the car. If there’s a stripper, I’m going to kill him.”

Adam snorted. “What’s a bachelor party without some murder.”

“Exactly.”

“Don’t get too drunk.”

“Can’t promise anything.” 

Alice yanked on the washing machine’s knob. The rush of filling water blocked out any more noise. 

Since she had arrived the three of them had kept a certain level of civility. A polite, emotionless disinterest. With her. With each other. Adam had pulled back on digging after she had rebuffed his outheld hand. But now the angry boyfriend was going out drinking. 

People could only keep appearances up for so long. 

 

#

 

Alice couldn’t say why she didn’t go to sleep that night, or why she instead laid awake and listened. She couldn’t say why, when she heard the door bang downstairs post 1am, she rose out of bed. Why, after a few creaks of the floorboards, she went out of her room, to the stairs, and down a few. Why she sat there. Far enough down to see through the banister into the living room where it was dark except for the distant light of one corner lamp. She couldn’t say why she decided to sit vigil. 

The boyfriend stumbled. Adam caught him by the arm. Adam led him to the couch, where the boyfriend collapsed. But he had Adam’s arm clasped him his own and brought Adam down with him. 

“Have fun?” Adam said as he kneeled on the wood floor. 

“Too much.” The boyfriend wrangled a hand in Adam’s hair and Adam was placating, going in for the guided kiss. Alice blinked down to her hands grasped on her knees and back again when long enough had passed. 

Adam said, “You good here?” 

The boyfriend dragged one arm over his eyes. “I can’t walk up those steps right now.” 

Adam laughed. Laughed? He stood and dragged a blanket over the boyfriend. “Sleep tight.” 

The boyfriend threw out his free arm and, if by some sheer magical luck, caught Adam’s hand in his as he passed. He brought Adam’s hand to his lips. “Love you.” His words slurred, but there was nothing angry to them. 

“Love you, too.”

Just as they had come together, their hands released as easy as flowing sand, and Adam headed straight towards the staircase. 

Alice couldn’t get back up the stairs fast enough not to be seen. Not with her old knees. Adam made it to the bottom of the staircase before she could even stand. He blinked up in the dark at her. 

What did he see? 

He took the stairs slow, avoiding creaks and heavy footsteps. He had always been half good at being a quiet thing. Out of the way, unseen, and unheard. Camouflage was a survival mechanism in the Parrish trailer. 

When he reached her he helped to her feet with a hand wrapped around her elbow. 

What he told her there, in a whisper, in the dark, revealed how much of Alice Parrish he had just seen and understood. 

“Everything’s fine,” Adam said. “He doesn’t hurt me.” 

Alice had been wrong. Adam wasn’t like her at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing from Alice's perspective was an interesting experiment.


	4. Ronan

They had gotten down to their bare skin. Hands and mouths were pleased to explore familiar stretches and nooks. Things had been tense all around the last two weeks since the mother moved in and this -- sex -- was the ultimate stress reliever as well as a wonderful couple bonding activity. 

Ronan nipped down Adam’s neck to collar bone. Adam keened, body arched, one arm busy supporting and the other hand digging fingernails into Ronan’s shoulder. It was the moment right before they descended into more. 

Adam jerked upright. 

“Was that the front door?” 

Ronan soothed his hand down Adam’s thigh. “So?” 

“My mom’s home.”

“So?” 

They were in the bedroom, door locked. In their own home. And they could be quiet. 

Adam pulled away. “I can’t --” He rolled off the bed -- out of Ronan’s reach -- and stood up. Ronan’s hand lingered on the place Adam had been. Adam was pulling on boxers. 

Ronan collapsed back on the mattress. “Really? In our own fucking house.” 

He didn’t say anything more of his frustration. He didn’t want to be too much of a dick about not getting laid, but now he was turned on and frustrated. And frustrated at the situation. And even frustrated at Adam. He was the one who had introduced his mother to the mix of their lives. The one to -- despite promises -- let it affect things. Them. And Adam himself, who was dampered down.

Ronan loved Adam and he hated this. 

Adam sat on the bed, button up shirt hanging loose from his shoulders. 

“I just --” he said, like it was painful. 

“Can’t do it because your mom hates that your queer?” Ronan tucked his hands behind his head. “Or can’t do it because your mom hates me?” 

Adam ran a hand over his face, weary seeming. A spike of self-hatred infected Ronan. Why couldn’t Ronan be more understanding? More supportive? Adam was going through this mire more than him. Feeling more. Suffering more. 

But Ronan had made his compromises. He didn’t know why he had to give in on this too. 

“Around my parents,” Adam said, eeking out a confession. “I’m not used to being me. All...” He hovered a hand over his chest, “All open.”

Adam wasn’t used to being himself, guards downs, passions exposed, and thus vulnerable. 

And because Adam didn’t need to be fighting a war on two fronts, Ronan sat up and pressed a kiss to Adam’s now clothed shoulder. It was a blessing to go on and do what was needed. 

They had lived in the world of meer survival before; They could shoulder it again.

 

#

Ronan Lynch had never heard Adam be so careful with picking out his words as he was overhearing now. 

“I’m not trying to rush you, but I’m just wondering where your head is at?... If you’ve thought at all about what you want to do... You know, with the future.”

Ronan had not staked himself in living room to listen in. He had staked himself in the living room to live in it. And if Mrs. Parrish had the habit of existing on the edge of their life, just one room over, Ronan could mirror it. And if Adam had the habit of finding his mother anytime she wasn’t sequestered in her room to try and have a sit down chat, Ronan knew of it. And if said attempts usually left Adam somewhere along the sliding scale of emotional distress, then Ronan would be nearby for the aftermath. 

“You want me to leave,” said Mrs. Parrish, in the kitchen. Ronan clicked down the television volume two notches. 

“No…,” Adam said. “I want to know what you want. If you wanted to move back to Henrietta. Or… if wanted to stay here in the city. And this is not just about living arrangements. I thought I could help get you set up with classes at the community college.”

“College?” Mrs. Parrish repeated like it was a punchline she found somewhat offensive.

“Or at the adult education center,” Adam plowed on like ‘college’ was the problem and not stubbornness. “Computer classes at the library.”  

“And what would I do with a computer?”

“Whatever you want.” 

“... I don’t want to use a computer.” 

“I’m not saying you have to use a computer.” Adam’s voice went to an edged pitch. “It’s just an example, Mom. Of stuff you can do that you couldn’t before. Now that you’re… now that you’re free.” 

A chair screeched back. That was the end of the conversation.  

Ronan squeezed his eyes shut. He heard one set of footsteps and not the other. 

He wondered why Adam couldn’t just hate her. It would make things so much easier. And if Ronan didn’t ache so painfully for Adam every time he witnessed or eavesdropped this toxic back and through, pleading and rejection, he would’ve found it pathetic. Because Mrs. Parrish was like some sort of stone wall that Adam kept desperately trying to connect with. 

“I saved myself. Why can’t I save her,” he had said to Ronan one night a while back when Ronan had exploded with versions of these questions out loud. 

And Ronan, who had very much been saved by the persistence of friends who would not give up on him even on the very worst days that he did not deserve it, could not come up with a satisfying rebuttal.  

Ronan turned off the television, stretched up from the couch, and headed to the kitchen. 

Adam had his head propped up on a single fist. Ronan rubbed a hand over the back of Adam’s shoulders as he sat in the chair left out beside him.  

Adam: “I’m just trying to…” 

“I know.” 

“But she doesn’t even seem to hear me.” 

“Some people are stubborn. I know a few.” He rested his chin on Adam’s shoulder. An arrangement of posture that said: ‘I’m not getting up until you move’ or rather ‘I’ll be here as long as you need.’

 

#

 

“It’s been like a month now, right?” Gansey said. “How’s it going?”

“How do you think it's fucking going?” Ronan replied. He had just been the one to call Gansey; that was evidence enough. “It’s like living with a mildly disapproving ghost.” 

“That sounds… inconvenient?” 

Ronan sighed between clenched teeth. There was something guttural about it. The problem was harder to talk about than an unlikeable mother-in-law. It was the chemical reaction her presence had on Adam. 

He pushed out the words before he stopped himself: “It’s hurting Adam.” Because Ronan Lynch can deal with being fucking disliked every day of the week, but he’d never been able to swallow Adam being hurt. That had never been a choice at all. 

“I know it’s fucking normal to want your parents to love you. But I thought Adam had given up on them years ago. Now I keep having to watch himself twist fucking over backwards trying to get to try and get anything out of that woman.” He paced to the edge of the room and turned. “And I don’t know how to tell him it’s not going to fucking work--” 

A stone dropped in his stomach. Adam was standing right there in the doorway. He had overhead. How much had he overheard. What was Adam doing standing there anyway? 

He had come to find Ronan. 

Adam twisted away and fled. 

“Ronan?” Gansey said. 

“I gotta go.” That was more of a goodbye than he usually gave, but he had been building up a tolerance to phones. He hung up and stuffed it in his back pocket. For purely himself: “Fuck!”

After some searching he found Adam on the roof deck. Something about night air made it a good place to clear your head. 

When the light of Ronan opening the deck door to step out glared across him, Adam crossed his arms, wrapped them tight, shoulders hunching in. Ronan knew in less than a second that Adam wasn’t mad. He was something much worse.  

“I really am pathetic.” 

“No,” Ronan said. “It’s fucking normal for people to want their parents to love them.” 

Adam’s shoulders grew tighter. The night air was cold. Neither of them had put on a jacket for this.  

Ronan stepped close. He wanted to wrap Adam right up in hug that very second. Wanted to wrap him in all the love he had been missing for so many years. But Adam was holding himself like a trapped animal. 

“It’s not fucking fair that they didn’t,” Ronan said. “They didn’t know what they missed out on. She doesn’t.”

And because Ronan had show him for the last many years how much  _ he  _ loved Adam, and exactly why, he didn’t need to explain it in words now. Adam had a history of proof. 

So Adam came to him, unwrapping enough to wrap himself back around Ronan, forehead going to Ronan’s shoulder. Ronan was glad to hold him up. 

“What am I supposed to do now? She doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“I’m not saying you have to kick her out on the street tomorrow, but you don’t have to keep feeding her your fucking soul.”

Adam nuzzled against him. Ronan phone buzzed in his back pocket. Adam got it out and squinted at the screen.

“Gansey.”

“Fuck. I need to tell him no one died.”

Adam took care of it. Rejected the call and then sent a text to confirm okay-ness. He slide the phone back in Ronan’s pocket. 

“Let’s go to bed. I just want to be… close to you right now.” 

Ronan pressed a kiss to Adam’s exposed neck. “Okay.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so bad at self promotion. 
> 
> Anyway, check me out on tumblr at ungoodgatsby.tumblr.com
> 
> If you are any which way interested in checking out my original fiction, check me out at www.margerybayne.com


	5. Adam

Back during his teenage years Adam Parrish would’ve never considered himself a dreamer. Looking back, he now saw otherwise. Who else could aspire to go from dirt poor to Ivy League if not someone who dreamed.

And who else could hope to see their mother change in twenty-eight years of not changing. 

In. His. Dreams. 

“Mom, we need to talk.” He had talked with her a lot this last month. He had talked  _ at _ her. This was different. He said it in a solid tone with all its implications.  _ We need to talk _ . And he wasn’t letting this one go without a solid ending. 

She turned down the television volume until it was a dull hum. Adam picked up the remote once she was done with it and turned the television off. Now they were just left with the hum of the house: the lamp in the corner, the old electric, the wind pushing through eaves. 

“We need to talk about your living arrangements.” 

Mom lifted her chin like she was prideful, but she wasn’t making direct eye contact. 

“You want me to leave.”

Adam directed his knees so he was facing her even if she wouldn’t face him. 

“I want to know what you want. In the long term.” 

“You want me to leave.” 

“I’m not trying to rush you, but we should come up with a timeline of --” 

“You want me to leave.”

“Fine,” Adam snapped. “Yes. I don’t want  _ my mother _ to live with me and my partner forever. Especially since…” 

She lowered her chin and looked at him straight on. 

There were a lot of things Adam had just cut off from saying: Especially since you don’t like Ronan. Since Ronan doesn’t like you. Since you don’t like it here. Since you moved in the house has felt filled with a thick, humid fog. 

...Especially since you don’t like me. 

He said: “Since you and Ronan don’t get along.” 

The room hummed. 

“He punched your father.” 

“Excuse me?” 

Adam had heard her clearly. He knew what she was referring to. That night had to mean a lot more to Adam than it ever did to her. It was the night Adam lost his hearing. The night Adam left. The night Adam spoke up. To her, it was just another night standing witness.  

To her, it was such an old memory. An old slight. And a disproportionate one to blame Ronan for. 

If anyone had the right to be angry about that night, it was Adam. 

“Ronan was defending me.” 

His mother said nothing. 

Adam curled his hands into the fabric  of the couch cushion like he was grounding himself. Like he was channeling all that swirling tornado’s amount of emotional energy downwards so the rest of him could stay steady.   

He spoke slowly. He wanted her to absorb this in all its magnitude. “That night Dad hit me so hard he made me permanently deaf in one ear.” 

He wasn’t sure that he ever told her that before. He had moved out so soon after. Talked to her so rarely after that. 

She said, unwavering, “That was an accident.” 

Sure, Robert Parrish hadn’t meant to deafen him when he had pushed him down the front stairs. He also hadn’t meant to break Adam’s wrist when Adam was eleven and Robert had twisted it so hard. It didn’t matter that the consequences weren’t exactly what he had intended. He had intended to cause hurt. 

“Nothing Robert Parrish did was ever an accident,” Adam said. “He was an angry and cruel man.” 

“Don’t talk about your father like that.” 

Adam could have laughed. Adam didn’t. 

“He beat me. My entire life. Until I had to run away... And he hurt you.” 

Not looking at him, Alice said, “You can’t understand.” 

Adam wanted to rip the couch cushion apart with his bare hands. “What can’t I understand?” 

He could understand scared. Cowed. Broken. But as she sat there like a tulip about to be slapped down he couldn’t help but remember years of her going silent and stoic and distant behind the eyes as Robert raged. He couldn’t help but be mad. 

Alice shifted in her seat and didn’t look at Adam as she said, “... He’s all I had.” 

“You could’ve had me!” It exploded out him -- the truth. And all that was left between his ribcage was the aftershock. “We could’ve have each other’s backs. We could’ve left. We could’ve made it together.” 

All those years, they could’ve suffered less. They could’ve suffered less alone. 

Mom look at him now. Stared at him like she never had before, and she had stared at him in a lot of ways. Usually bad was. Weary ways. Never like she was seeing him for the first time in all his limitless possibilities. Her whole life had been shaped by its limitations. How foreign to see something that had broken through. 

She blinked. “I’m not like you.” 

But as Adam sat with her then, he couldn’t help but see someone who was very much like him. Like the boy he once one. A person who would absolutely and stubbornly not accept any help. Especially not the most genuine offers. 

This is why, he thought, that she couldn’t understand. Adam thought that maybe she would never understand.

What a strange bitterness. Adam had spent his teen years high on his virtue of being unknowable. It was in his nature of survival to be a complicated and compartmentalized. But since Ronan -- since Blue and Gansey and Persephone and others after that -- he knew the simple pleasure of being known. 

That’s what he wanted now. A common ground with his mother. A place where they could understand each other. 

That’s what he wanted from his father other than his death. For his father to have enough self-awareness to see past his ignorance and anger to realize that he had missed out by pushing Adam Parrish away. 

“I would’ve had your back,” he said. If she had let him. If had she had ever wanted it. 

But she hadn’t wanted it, and that was the thing pounding in his ears like a heartbeat: Why not? Why not? Why not?

“I would have your back now.” A new house, an education, a career. A new fucking chance at her knowing her son. 

His mother reached across the small but vacuumous distance between them and took the closest of his knotted hands in both of hers.

“You’ve done enough,” she said. Her palms were the sky-dried type of rough even if her touch wasn’t. “You’re a good boy.” 

Adam blinked. He blinked again. His eyes burned. His chest felt tight, like bound. Shit. 

He stood up. He walked out of the living room. 

He stopped in the hall. Between here and there. Crossed his arms. Ducked in his head, squeezed those burning eyes shut. The breath he sucked in shuddered. 

Ronan found him. Ronan always found him. You’d think he was the one who was psychic. 

“Hey.”

Adam ducked in a little tighter. 

“I’ve just never heard her say it before.” His lips tasted like saline. Despite his efforts, tears had been released. 

Ronan’s arms wrapped around Adam curled-up self. He couldn’t know what the fuck was going on, but he knew enough to do this. 

 

#

 

The next morning, Alice’s packed duffle was sitting up the base of the stairs and she was sitting -- hands folded -- on the couch for Adam to come downstairs. 

“What’s going on?” he asked her. 

She said, “I want to go back to Henrietta.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter, but I didn't want to pad it. I'd rather let it be effective and short.


	6. Ronan (+Alice)

Pinkish halfmoon indents were stamped on Ronan’s arms. The aftermarks of Adam’s fingernails. He hadn’t meant to hurt Ronan; Adam never meant to hurt anyone physically. He consciously avoided causing hurt. 

Ronan wasn’t hurt. Just marked. This evidence of Adam clinging to him throughout the night would fade. 

It was late morning now and Adam was just a tuft of hair visible above the duvet. 

“Can you take her?” Adam croaked. 

They were words Ronan had expected since dawn. He kneeled on the bed and pressed a kiss to the sliver of Adam’s forehead that was visible. 

“Be back in an hour.” 

“Drive slow,” came Adam’s muffled voice. 

That was unlikely. 

“...I’ll make an effort.” 

Downstairs, Ronan found Mrs. Parrish in the kitchen. She had managed to scrounge her own breakfast. She only looked at him when he cleared his throat. Loudly.

“Adam doesn’t feel good, so I’ll be driving you to the airport,” he said. Then he waited. He wanted her to say ‘is he okay?’ or ‘I have to say goodbye.’ The silence between them hung consistent; she didn’t move. 

He crossed his arms. “We’re leaving in ten minutes.”

Ten minutes. That was her deadline to be a good fucking mother. 

Ronan couldn’t wait until she was gone, and the minutes were ticking. Couldn’t wait until she wasn’t here to prod Adam’s open wounds every damn day so he could start to heal. 

Ronan knew that she wouldn’t ever be truly gone. Like a tattoo, he knew that Adam’s childhood would be something he always carried with him. The same way Ronan would always carry that moment of finding father’s beaten body. 

The past shaped you and carved you and scarred you, but it wasn’t all that there was. It didn’t have to stop you from moving. It didn’t have to stop you from growing. It didn’t have to stop you.

Mrs. Parrish said and did nothing in her ten minutes of reprieve. Then the two of them loaded into the car, silent. Silent but not peaceful. Ronan was boiling. 

But she was going and Ronan could finally let it go of this fight. Put down his defenses and offenses. 

Half an hour later, Ronan guided his car off the stop-and-start roads of the city and onto the highway. His foot weighed down on the gas and the engine purred in familiar greeting. On fast roads he was his true self. This about Ronan was true: he didn’t let things go. Least of all fights.

“You don’t deserve him,” he spat out. His grip on the steering wheel was laced tight. He didn’t look away from straight forward. Sitting in the passenger seat beside him, he didn’t think Mrs. Parrish did either. 

“He does so much shit for you. Tears out his fucking heart.” Ronan changed lanes to get past a too slow minivan. “Adam is…” But he didn’t have the words for the complex and beautiful thing that Adam was. Ronan just knew it like he knew how to breath. Knew the miracle that Adam, despite everything, still decided to love.

“I know I don’t deserve him.” 

The words came like a wisp. Ronan finally looked at her. She was as a small and shrunken thing as when she had arrived, but with this admittance there was something new. 

Self-awareness, Ronan knew, was a perilous and powerful thing. 

“I can’t give him what he needs.” 

The car jerked as Ronan pressed on the brake as they came on too fast to a tractor trailer. “You could fucking try.” 

It was more raw than it was angry.

Her hand wrapped tight around the seatbelt. 

For a while after that they were both quiet. Ronan thought, really thought, that might be the end of it. He had peaked behind the curtain, but was now stonewalled again, just like Adam had been at every turn. 

He maneuvered the car onto the exit ramp. They were almost to the airport. If she had anything to say she should say it now. Should’ve said it an hour ago. Three days ago. Ten years. Twenty. 

He turned into the airport parking lot. There was a still stretch until they reached the terminal. 

“Me being here hurts him,” she said, apparently self aware enough for that, and Ronan couldn’t argue with her on his point. 

Ronan pulled up to the drop off spot. Yanked the parking brake.  

“You don’t hurt him.” She said it like a statement. 

Ronan’s natural reaction would be to say, ‘I try not to.’ Because sometimes there was anger. Sometimes they argued. Sometimes he said cruel things. Less now than when he was younger. But that was not what she meant. 

He knew what she meant. 

“No, I don’t.” 

That was a low bar to hurdle. There were other things. He loved Adam. He care for him. Adam was successful. Adam was happy. 

She looked out the window, nodded. Not looking at him in the slightest, he was shocked to feel her cold fingers touch his arm. He jerked in surprised response. Her fingers skirted away. If there was something else she wanted to say, she didn’t say it. She got out of the car, got her bag, and left. 

 

#

 

It was Alice’s second time being in an airport in her life. The first time alone. But she wasn’t so completely useless that she couldn’t follow signs, get in lines, follow instructions, and ask a customer service agent for help when she got a little turned around. It was not too long until he was seated in a cramped seat on the plane. Until it was taking off. Until she fell asleep and then woke a few hours later on her side of the Mason-Dixon line. 

There was a still a bus ride and then a taxi after that until she was back in her rust-colored town. Adam had set that all up. Figured out timetables and prepaid. Even though she had just broken his heart. 

She didn’t deserve him. The best she ever did was tolerate him in her home. Alice had tried to love someone once, and it had destroyed. She had nothing left by the time Adam came along. 

All the way back in forgotten Henrietta it was a lot a harder to hurt him. It was the best she could do. Maybe the best thing in her miserable life that she had ever done. 

Alice just wanted to stop hurting him. This was the only way she knew how to do it. 


	7. Adam

Sometimes after a strenuous case filing had come to a close Adam would feel strangely empty. Not in a bad way, necessarily, but in a post-adrenaline-rush way. All that stress was over and he was left relieved but too exhausted to enjoy it. 

That was what felt like when he finally dragged himself out of bed sometime post-lunchtime. He shuffled downstairs in the t-shirt and sweats he counted as pajamas. He drank the end of the orange juice right out of the carton and ate four slices of whatever fancy bread Ronan bought. (His perspective was still skewed; anything not supermarket sliced white bread was fancy.) 

He was just about done chewing when he heard the front door open and shut. Shuffling into the living room, he found Ronan slouched on the couch. Ronan had taken longer to return than driving to the airport and back should’ve taken, but Adam didn’t ask about that. If he didn’t understand by now how Ronan sometimes needed to drive around to clear his head and settle his nerves, well, then, they probably wouldn’t have made it to now. 

Adam wrapped his knuckles on the doorframe. “Did you do anything stupid?”

Ronan leaned his head back along the top of the couch, taking in the state of Adam with his intense gaze, all the more intensive for his dark lashes. 

There were moments where Adam was struck by how intensively unfair it was how fucking gorgeous Ronan was. Unfair to the rest of the world that Ronan got to look like he did; unfair to the rest of the world that Adam was one of the few that got to appreciate it. This was one of those moments. 

“You know me better than that,” Ronan said. 

The muscles around Adam’s mouth twitched. “You’re right. I do. You definitely did something stupid.”   

Adam crossed the room and kneeled on the couch, straddling Ronan’s lap -- a sort of intimacy they had been avoiding in the public places of their home for weeks now. Adam pressed his mouth to Ronan’s, then spoke into it: “Thank you.”

Ronan dragged his fingers up Adam’s spine. 

“Anytime. Anywhere.” He nipped Adam’s bottom lip. “Always.”

Adam ran his hands down Ronan’s chest. Something crinkled under the press of Adam’s palms. Like papers in Ronan’s inner jacket pocket. Which was strange because Ronan didn’t live a type of life that necessitated carrying papers in his inner jacket pocket. 

Adam reached inside and Ronan didn’t stop him. They didn’t have those kind of secrets. He pulled out a long white envelope with whatever was inside. “What’s this?”  
“It’s a contract,” Ronan said. 

“A contract?” 

“I haven’t signed it yet.” 

Adam was still stuck on ‘contract.’ 

“I was thinking sleeping with a lawyer would get me some free legal advice.” His hands squeezed Adam’s sides. 

Adam tapped Ronan on the nose with the envelope. “But what’s it about?” 

“About… being a partner in this urban agricultural thing.”

“Urban agricultural thing?” 

“Are you just going to keep fucking repeating what I’m saying?” 

“Until you make sense. Yes.” 

“Just read it.” 

So Adam sat back on his legs and read it. Ronan was silent as he waited. 

“I’m not an expert on urban-agricultural-thing contract law, but it seems pretty cool. How’d this come about?”

“See, I always wanted to be a farmer --”

“Lynch.”  

Ronan tucked his chin, but -- as always -- he was too brazen to withdraw eye contact. Adam engaged in a staring contest back until Ronan broke. 

“I just kept hearing you talk to  _ her _ about what she was going to do with the rest of her life, and community college and all that shit... I got to thinking about what I was going to do with the rest of my fucking life.” He added on a little smirk, “Other than be your trophy boyfriend.” 

Adam refolded the papers. “...At least I got through to someone.” 

“Hey.” Ronan wrapped his hand around the back of Adam’s neck. “People are people. They’re fucked up and they just… Look, like Declan’s an asshole. But I’ve accepted it, because that’s how he shows he fucking cares.” 

Adam squinted at him. There was obviously more that he was not telling. 

“Maybe the best thing a person can do for another person is to just… leave them the fuck alone.” 

Adam wasn’t sure if Ronan meant it as advice or insight. It had been a long time since Adam had felt so relentlessly tired as he had been trying to get through to his mom. 

He remembered being tired all the time. In his youth. Which was supposed to be a time of boundless energy. Back then he had work and school and worries. Worries that he no longer has: money, being hit, the condition of certain magical forests. The future. 

God. He wasn’t worried about the future anymore. He leaned in, resting his forehead against Ronan’s. Ronan’s warm hands slide up his back. Safe. He felt safe. 

Insight or advice, Adam Parrish was tired of being tired. He had a life to live. Hard-earned. And he was going to take the time and attention to appreciate it. He couldn’t make someone who didn’t want to change, change. But he had someone who loved him right there, under his hands, real. Anywhere. Anytime. Always. 

 

#

 

Life slowly eked back to normal the way life had a way of doing. Of finding an equilibrium between emotional turbulence and the everyday mundane patterns. Adam went hours without thinking of his mother, and then days. He got a raise at work. Already making more money that his thrifty soul knew what to do with, he valued it more for what it meant than the digits -- success, recognition, a job well done. 

Successful in business, he took care of his mother in this business way -- regimented and not overly attached. Distant, might be the word. 

He set up recurring payments to take care of her regular fees: trailer park rent, utilities, old debts come a-calling. Enough that she wouldn’t have to wait for it to get so bad that she would have to get over her pride to ask for help. There were still other things that could cause financial disaster though. Water heater going out. Medical bills. 

So he instituted regular check-in calls on the fifteenth of every month. Scheduled. Business-like. So that neither of them would think the call was purposed by emotion or emergency. He would make sure she was alive. He would make sure there were no issues she was too prideful to ask for help about. They rarely lasted longer than ten minutes, and they were ten minutes of teeth pulling. 

Afterwards, his guilt was assuaged. Or he was angry. Or just tired out. 

Every fifteenth of the month Ronan’s plans magically vanished. Meetings cancelled. Didn’t want to go out for drinks anyway. Might be coming down with that bug that’s going around. 

Of course Adam knew what Ronan was doing as he pattered around the kitchen afterward, making dinner with his newest haul of veggies or ordering in Chinese. Of course Adam didn’t say anything about what he knew. Of course Ronan didn’t either. 

They didn’t need to. Sometimes the best thing a person can do for another person is just be there. 

 

#

 

“I worked out the hitch with the water company, so everything should be back to normal. You’ll tell me if it doesn’t get back to normal, right?”  
Over rough phone reception he heard his mother take in a sharp inhale that he knew meant she was annoyed. 

“...Yes.” 

Adam scratched the back of his head. These calls always made him fidgety. 

“That should be everything unless you needed something else…”

Static. 

“Mom, do you need something else?”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child, Adam. I haven’t been one for a very long time.” 

Adam’s eyebrows shot up even though there was no one there to see it. Even if Ronan had managed to make sure he was at home on this certain day for the last eight months, he didn’t hover in the same room. He knew the importance of privacy.

Mom’s snipping. That was… different. There was always underlying tension in their calls, but Adam had thought they had both silently bargained to ignore it and force themselves onward. 

Adam had a lot of things he could say back about the responsibilities of parents and children, but he didn’t want to get into an argument with his mother. It wasn’t worth the emotional energy to get through to her. He had learned that the hard, emotional wringer way already.

Instead, he said, “Alright, so I’m going to hang up now.” 

“Wait --” So there was something. “How… How’s your…”

“Yes?” 

“How’s your partner?” The words came out with the elegance of dirt out of a dump truck.

“Excuse me?” Adam said in surprise. 

“Neverm--”  
“No, he’s good.” Adam rushed in before she could complete her retraction. He could contemplate the weirdness of hearing the genuine slice of words “how’s your partner” coming from his mom when she had barely been able to look at the two of them sitting close enough to touch shoulders later. “He’s deep into this urban agricultural project now.” 

“Excuse me?” Alice said in confusion. 

“That’s everyone’s reaction,” Adam said, a little fond. It was a lot to explain and would be even more so for her. He was sure if she sat it out that her reaction would be to think that if someone wanted agricultural they should move out of the city. (Adam knew the answer for that too. Ronan didn’t move out of the city for Adam. Adam took it for both what it was intended, a gift, and what he found it to be, a responsibility.) 

“And… how’re you?” 

Adam bite his inner lip for a second. “I’m good. I’m… I’m… I got a raise at work.” He wished his phone had one of those coiling cords so that he could curl his fingers in it. That’s what she would be doing. Closing his eyes he could imagine it perfectly. That beige-yellow phone attached to the kitchen wall. The little furrowed expression she wore when she talked on it. Her fingers wrapping in and out of the cord in an absent fidget. 

“You always were a hard worker.” 

Adam squeezed the phone. Only after a prolonged moment in which he ensured the buttresses holding up his composure were sure did he reply, “Thanks.”

More static.

“I have to go. A new lady moved in next door. We’re playing cards tonight.” 

“That’s nice, Mom.”

“It’s just cards.” 

It wasn’t just cards. Adam didn’t know the last time his mother had a social engagement with anyone. 

“She has a better TV.”

“You don’t have to make excuses to have fun.” Like he hadn’t been guilty of the same thing before. 

They said rote goodbyes. Adam reminded he would call again next month. Elicited a promise that she would call if anything --  _ anything  _ \-- came up in the meantime. They hung up. Adam took a big breath.

Ronan appeared like condensation moments later. “What’re you thinking tonight? Tacos? Thai?” 

“What about that stew you make?”

“You’re going to have to be more fucking specific than that.” 

“The good one.”

Smug. “You’re going to have to be more fucking specific.” 

Adam grabbed a handful of Ronan’s shirt and pulled him in for a kiss. Something quick and domestic. 

“You’re in a good mood,” Ronan commented after he stepped back. He studied Adam with eyes that saw all. The fifteenth of the month wasn’t a time that Adam was usually in a good mood. 

Adam shrugged. “I suppose I am.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so I have not gotten all of my pynch future fics out of my head. (If you haven't checked out my backlog, I have written various variations on pynch future fics.) Perfect timing for Call Down the Hawk to smash them all the pieces.


End file.
